Coal Country

This week I went to Staunton VA. My old friend Lorie got the film “Coal Country” placed in a small film series at the Mockingbird Café/performing arts center. This is a film by Phylis Geller and Mari-Lynn Evans that I scored. Her daughters, Molly and Sally, had performed one of the songs that we used in the film. Also, and I had forgotten this, Lorie and I sang a song for the film. The event was simple: a screening of the film after it was introduced by several local “green” luminaries. And after the film Lorie, Molly, Sally, a fiddler named TJ, and I were to perform three songs. What an interesting screening. It was a thoughtful crowd. After all this is REALLY coal country. The film is largely about West Virginia – and the mountaintop removal sites that are in this film are less than 200 miles away. The music performance, however, was wildly well-received. Molly and Sally sang beautifully. I just played guitar and Lorie played bass. When we were done the audience roared for an encore. I had to push (not tooooo hard) Sally and Molly right back on stage. Then I went out to the audience to listen and had a rural/old-timey transcendent moment hearing them sing their next two songs. One was called “Working Girl.” Stayed the night with Lorie and her family out on their farm. It was all very snowy and beautiful and a real break from my regular life.

Earlier in the week I had lunch with Karim Chrobog. He is the director from “War Child.” I suspect he will be a very big success in the film biz someday.

Also had a terrific Chaise Lounge session with Pete and Tommy. We recorded rhythm tracks to Bali Ha’i and and a song called “I’m Going to Ruin Your Day.” We are on the way to producing another very good Chaise Lounge CD.

Starting work on my first 3-D film. It is a film by Dave Clark for the Field Museum in Chicago. It is pretty cool and they want an orchestral score. All big fun for me.

Until next time.

Happy 2010!

Yeah yeah yeah. This time 2 1/2 months go by…

Happy New Year everyone!

I live in Washington DC and we are now under 3 feet of snow with more on the way. I thought that when everyone was talking about “climate change” they were talking about things getting WARMER! I would be pretty much be ok with that. But colder? I suffer in the cold. There is a very good reason I live in the South. ( albeit the northernmost part) This has been hard on us here. The county is out of money to plow the snow and I am out of hot chocolate.

Work has been interesting. There is a concert coming up that is taking an enormous amount of my attention. On Mar. 21st Chaise Lounge will be playing a concert with the Capital City Symphony. The first part of the concert is the world premier of an orchestral suite of mine called “The Tarot.” The second half will be Chaise Lounge doing 12 songs with the full orchestra behind us. This is a HUGE production. Maybe if we get to do this a number of times it will get easier. But just writing the arrangements was a big task. And now trying to figure out how we will all fit on the stage is an issue. It is at the Atlas Performing Arts Center BTW. (13th and H NE Washington DC). For all the Chaise Lounge fans out there – this is a very cool concert to come to.

In other concert news: the Bedford concert with the Washington Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and Ulysses James was a big success. The actors were great. and the orchestra played really well. At the first show ( the world premier) the pianist did not show up for unknown reasons and I was conscripted into the orchestra for that performance. You would think that would have been easy for me. After all I wrote it…. You would be wrong, Sir! I was terrified. I am much more comfortable on the podium than in the orchestra.

Christmas came and went with the minimum of emotional ruination.

Chaise Lounge just played at the Kennedy Center! What a nice show! You can see it by going to the Chaise Lounge site and clicking on something there… it is easy.

In other Chaise Lounge news: we have a date at Iridium in NYC — July 6th. I hope you all come.